miserable looking

English grammar questions, answered by Alan

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azz
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miserable looking

Post by azz »

a. I saw a sick and miserable looking boy standing at the corner of the street.

b. I saw a sick and miserable-looking boy standing at the corner of the street.


The question is whether in (a) or in (b) 'looking' could modify 'sick'.

In other words, was the boy

1. miserable-looking and sick

or

2. sick-looking and miserable-looking

I think the hyphen in (b) might be considered an indication that 'looking' only modifies 'miserable'. But I think in practice such a 'rule' would not be considered a rule and one would have to rely on context to know what is going on.

Many thanks.
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Alan
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Re: miserable looking

Post by Alan »

To clearly indicate that both 'sick' and 'miserable' submodify 'looking', we would write as follows:

I saw a sick- and miserable-looking boy standing at the corner of the street.


Naturally, in spoken form there would be some ambiguity.
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